Daughters Of The Storm (14 page)

‘Not even Gudrun?'

‘Not even Gudrun.'

‘And when she notices her husband is missing?'

‘She will have her son for comfort. Gudrun isn't our concern. Though Bluebell worded it more colourfully than that.'

Byrta picked up her shuttle again, her lips disappearing as she set her mouth in a line. ‘Well. It sounds as though you have both made up your minds. I must do as Bluebell says, so you'll have no argument from me. I'm surprised you're telling me at all. You didn't need my advice.'

‘We would not leave you in the dark. You have always been my father's counsellor and companion. You are family. Your wisdom has ever been a great comfort to me ...' She trailed off. She wanted so badly to tell Byrta about the vision, about the terrible fear it had awoken in her. Her ears began to ring faintly, her head felt light, as though the awful knowledge woven into the vision was a presence in the room, pinching her skull.

Byrta sensed her distress. ‘Ash? You're trembling.'

Ash looked at her own pale hands in her lap. ‘So I am.'

‘Is there something wrong?'

‘No.' But forcing a smile was as difficult as building a bridge over a raging river. She took a deep breath.

Byrta kept weaving. ‘Go on. I'm listening.'

‘I ... do you think it's possible to know your own Becoming?'

‘No. You can't turn your sight on yourself.'

‘What if it comes in a vision?'

Byrta shrugged, clearly at the end of her knowledge, and Ash decided not to say another word; not to say that she had always felt she was destined to die young, that she had been so fearful of death and so desperate to surround herself with company. The ringing in her ears became momentarily deafening. Byrta was moving her lips, but Ash couldn't hear her.

‘What did you say?' Ash said to Byrta, once the ringing had subsided.

‘All of you girls are given to too much drama,' Byrta said, but her voice was kind. ‘Ash, you are so young. The path towards being a counsellor is a long one, and you'll likely be a crone before anything you think or feel is reliable in the world. Go and be with your father, child. He's dying.'

Ash stood, pushing away the irritation. ‘Very well. Thank you for listening to me.'

Byrta's brow was soft. ‘You will become what you will become, Ash,' she said.

Ash left her, still weaving hand over hand in the dim room.

Bluebell watched Gudrun, and Gudrun watched Bluebell. Between them: a wooden bed with a wool mattress and a king on the verge of waking. He muttered, his brow furrowing deeply, almost as though he could sense the tightly drawn mood in the room.

Bluebell had apologised, though it had nearly split her tongue in two to do so. She had sent Dunstan away so Gudrun didn't feel she was under guard. She was doing, she thought, a very good impersonation of a woman who had accepted her father was sick and there was nothing she could do and nobody she could kill. But it made her ribs ache that this woman was sitting across from her still, tending to the king: because Bluebell didn't trust her.

Æthlric's hands started to twitch. Gudrun sat forward, making a soothing noise, stroking his fingers. Bluebell stood and paced towards the window, cracking open the shutter and taking deep breaths. She could bear his long, silent sleeps, but his raving was like needles under her skin. Sometimes he wept: she had never seen her father weep once, not even when her mother had died. She hadn't even thought it possible he could weep, and it loosened
every nerve in her guts to hear it. She gazed out across the square to the hall, watching a sparrow clean its feathers on the corner of a tile. Spring drizzle fell on the tight little buds that covered the hawthorn hedge below the window. Life renewing itself.

A loud noise from behind drew her attention. Her father was moaning and thrashing now, calling out words with urgent precision. Only they weren't words; just noises, as though he were commanding an imaginary army of madmen. Gudrun leaned over to touch his hair and he sat up fast and flung his arm out, pushing her off him. She landed in a heap on the floor, crying out. Æthlric kicked off his blankets and rolled out of the bed, shouting and hurling his arms around, making for the door.

Bluebell was fast on her feet, intercepting him. ‘No, Father, you can't go out there.'

He turned to her, eyes blazing, and released a spittle-laden stream of meaningless abuse in her face. He pushed against her, unbalancing her, and reached for the door.

Bluebell didn't think. She launched herself at him, grabbed him around the waist and tackled him to the floor. He shouted and lashed out, but she sat astride him, pinning him down, bony knees nailing his arms. ‘Stop it!' she shouted at him. ‘You're not going anywhere.'

I'm stronger than him.
The thought was sudden and piercing. She had brought her own father down. Beneath her, Æthlric went soft. She glanced down. His eyes were fluttering closed.

‘Fuck,' she spat, climbing to her feet. She turned to see Gudrun behind her, her lip split and bleeding. ‘Go and see Byrta,' she said. ‘She'll tend to your lip. I'll get him back in bed.'

‘You'll need help.'

‘I don't need help. I can manage. You're bleeding on your dress.'

Gudrun touched her lip, glanced down at Æthlric. ‘I can lift his legs if you —'

Bluebell leaned over, scooped her sleeping father into her arms, then took him back to his bed. ‘Go and get your lip fixed,' she said, settling him on the mattress and smoothing the blankets back over him. ‘Take a rest. I can look after him.'

Gudrun wavered. The dark rings under her eyes told Bluebell she was longing for proper sleep.

‘Go,' she said. ‘I know you don't like me, but you cannot deny I love him and will care for him well.'

‘Very well. I will rest.'

She didn't answer. Gudrun slipped out.

Bluebell dropped her cheek onto Æthlric's hands, closed her eyes and lay still a long time while her heart slowed. She could hear birds, hooves and wheels, shouting from the marketplace, the clang of the smithy ringing a rhythm. And in the room, her father's breathing, her breathing, winding together. A memory stirred. She had been sixteen, on her first real campaign with Æthlric; finally he had relented, after she'd begged him for years to be able to see battle. Her mother's death had unleashed in her a violent restlessness and fighting alongside her father — her lord, her king, the famed Storm Bearer of Blicstowe — was the only thing she could imagine would soothe her. They were stamping out small incursions by some of the lower lords of Netelchester. At the end of the first week of the campaign she became tired. She was barely out of her childhood, still growing an inch a year. Somebody should have noticed she was too tired to fight; perhaps
she
should have noticed, or at least admitted it. Somehow, she had got herself cut off from the hearthband with three enemies surrounding her. She killed the first while fending off blows from the other two, but her hot heart told her she wouldn't survive five more breaths.

And then, he came. Æthlric had seen her, fled his place in the skirmish. She took a blow to the leg, fell to the ground, only to
look up and see her father. Death in a whirlwind: his bright sword weightless, two bodies thudding to the blood-soaked grass next to her. And then he was gone, back into the fray, leaving her nursing her bleeding thigh.

The desire that infused her then was monumental. She wanted to
be
him, not be
like
him. This mighty bond with her father was more than love, more than kisses and comfort; indeed she could not remember the last time he had kissed her. It was how she assembled herself. Without him, how would she know how to live, how to rule, how to grow old?

The door opened, startling her from a near-doze. A little girl's voice rang out clearly: ‘It smells bad in here.'

Bluebell leapt to her feet. It was Rose, with Rowan and Heath.

‘You're here,' she said, crushing Rose in an embrace.

‘Enough,' Rose said, laughing, pushing her away. ‘The oil from your byrnie won't wash out of this dress.'

Bluebell crouched to Rowan's level and grasped the little girl's upper arm. ‘Your muscles have grown, little chicken.'

‘I'm not a chicken,' Rowan said defiantly. ‘I'm a bear.
Roar!
'

Bluebell feigned fright and fell on her backside among the rushes. Rowan shrieked with giggles.

Bluebell climbed to her feet, dropped her voice and rested a gentle hand on Rowan's head. ‘I don't want the little girl in here with Father. He's unpredictable.'

Rose turned her eyes to Heath. ‘Could you take Rowan to Byrta?'

‘Of course.'

Bluebell couldn't bear the soft voices and hot eyes they shared with each other. Did they not know it was obvious they were saying one thing and thinking another? She took a short tone with Heath. ‘Find Ash for us. She's likely with Byrta, anyway. And
then take a room above the alehouse,' Bluebell added pointedly. ‘Only family will be near the king.'

‘As you wish, my lord.'

‘I'll speak with you tomorrow. You can either go home to Folcenham for a few weeks, or straight back up to the garrison. But we don't need you here any longer.'

Rose's eyebrows drew down in annoyance with Bluebell, but she offered Heath a smile. Bluebell returned to Father. She could hear Rowan complaining all the way down the lane.

A moment later, Rose was kneeling next to her. She and Ash were very alike in some ways — same dark hair and eyes, same pretty smile — but Rose was soft and curvy like their mother, and always wore her hair loose.

‘How long has he been like this?' Rose asked, reaching out for Father's forehead.

‘He's been ill for over a week, but he's not always sleeping. He's often raving.' Bluebell dropped her voice low. ‘There are matters of extreme urgency to discuss.'

‘What matters?'

‘Not now.' Bluebell glanced around. ‘When Ash comes.' Bluebell returned her gaze to Rose. ‘Are you still cock-charmed by your nephew?'

‘He's not my nephew, he's my husband's nephew.' Even in the dim room, Bluebell could see Rose's cheeks colour. ‘And, yes, I still love him.'

‘After three years apart?'

Rose's heavy-lidded eyes grew dark. ‘Yes,' she said shortly, ‘and if I wasn't stuck in this arranged marriage with Wengest —'

‘You would never have met him,' Bluebell pointed out quickly.

‘
You
have never loved,' Rose said.

‘And I don't expect to. That would fuck up just about everything.' She touched Rose's hand. ‘I've got my mind on Ælmesse's
security, Rosie. Wengest won't be friends with me if he finds out you're being poked by his nephew and it will start over again. Skirmishes along the border, quarrels over trade routes. The icemen will hear of it and take advantage of it and then I've got a war on my hands. So be a little more careful, won't you? If the next royal bastard of Netelchester has red hair, you can count on thousands of lives lost.'

A muscle beside Rose's mouth twitched. ‘I tried to do the right thing, but once I fell in love it wasn't clear what was right any more.' She glanced away. ‘You haven't told anyone, have you?' she said.

‘Of course not.'

‘Father?'

‘Why would I tell him? He'd be ashamed.' Bluebell stood and strode to the shutter. Immediately, she felt bad for what she had said, though Rose had given no outward sign of being hurt by it. ‘I'm sorry, Rose,' she said. ‘We pay a price for our privilege. You're not a milkmaid, you're a king's daughter.'

‘Would I were a milkmaid.'

Bluebell opened her mouth to argue further. Heath would not have looked twice at a milkmaid; he was a king's nephew and had a high opinion of himself. But she sensed Rose hadn't the heart for such an argument. Silence fell on the room for a few heartbeats. The light was dim and, Rowan was right, it did smell bad. Yesterday, she'd stoked the fire high and opened the windows to let the fresh spring air in, but still the staleness clung. It made her think of the bad magic Ash had sensed, clinging to his sheets and clothes and hair the way grass seeds clung to the hem of a cloak. Deep in her gut, the fury prickled but she did not let it form. Plenty of time for that, once Father was well. She would find the person who did this. Their fate was rushing towards them even now and it smelled like cold iron and hot blood.

The door opened. Ash stood there, dark circles drawn deep under her eyes.

‘Ash!' Rose exclaimed, throwing her arms around her sister. They held each other tight a few moments.

Ash pulled away and smiled weakly. ‘We have much to discuss.'

‘Here?' Rose asked.

‘Someone has to stay with Father,' Bluebell said. ‘He won't hear us.'

Ash went to the other side of the bed to sit on Gudrun's stool. Rose and Bluebell sat across from her. Æthlric slept on between them, oblivious.